This is a "feature" that was only ever available in India. It still sucks, but that's a pretty rage-baity headline.
this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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Ah yes, only in the country with the world's biggest population and an android market share of 95%
they should have specified in the title anyway.
This needs to be a rule in most communities, country ALWAYS needs to be specified. You can't ask for it to be specified for one country and not the other.
It's also really disingenuous to show a picture of a passport. Because people's only copy of their passport is a JPG inside Files?
I mean I've used the photo of my passport I've had favourited on my phone whenever my passport number/a scan of my passport has been needed for about the last 10 years, so it's at least an inconvenience to just delete them rather than moving them to documents/files or whatever
I was sure I'm getting baited when I clicked the link but it's one of the rare cases when it actually turned out not to be a clickbait.
This feature literally found and isolated "important files" and now they are deleting those files. Just because it was never available in the US doesn't mean it's irrelevant.
They are deleting the files instead of moving them out of the feature they automatically included. Man Google just keep sucking.
Yeah, well, at least it only affects important official documents. /s
"Don't Be Evil"
Wait, so Google just moved around important users' files on their devices without being asked to do so. And now they decided to just delete those files together with the feature? This sounds pretty crazy, even for Google.
According to the article this is a feature that finds “important” documents. Like auto-starring files.
Yeah, so basically Google invented a feature that finds your important files and deletes them. The future is here!
Of course I'm exaggerating for humoristic effect but in all seriousness I think the whole action is extremely poorly executed. I would be surprised if there weren't some cases of people actually losing something important because of this.
Oh wait
Particularly worrying for users is that Google plans to delete any file that is inside the Important tab by February 15, 2024. Users who don't want to lose access to these files need to move them before the shutdown data.
They’re literally deleting them what the fuck?
This is so fucking weird. Features like this usually work by merely attaching tags or creating shortcuts, and without moving the original file anywhere. Therefore removing the "Important" tab should only remove the tags and leave files intact.
I wonder whether it's a poor implementation of the feature by Google (highly unlikely) or poor understanding and misrepresentation of the process by the article's author (highly possible).
remember when internet companies were cool and benevolent?
No? Because despite what they said they were still companies. All those words about not being evil, etc, etc, etc were just PR, nothing else.
In the early days of the internet a lot of these companies were entirely made of nerds who just wanted to create cool shit.
But as they got bigger they all went the same way.
~~Don't be evil~~
So what, Indian users had their important files automatically marked as important, and then deleted? How is this a feature and not the opposite?
Literally just keep all saved files and make it manual for users to set their important files. These companies have no clue on how to keep any app.
WTF? I'm not sure if my files will get deleted. I wish google were a bit less evil and notify me of what i'm getting deleted.